Mentzelos will give a talk on elliptic curves and the Birch and Swinnerton-dyer conjecture, which is one of the millennium prize problems. We will have some nice lunch to go with it!

In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute identified seven of the most important unsolved problems in mathematics, offering a $1 million prize for the solution to each. One of these is the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture (BSD), which concerns the arithmetic of elliptic curves. This talk will introduce elliptic curves, with the aim of explaining the statement of the BSD conjecture. No advanced background will be needed to follow the presentation; just some familiarity with basic linear algebra and the definition of a group will be enough.